Why Do I Need a Gym Floor Cover?

A gymnasium floor is a major expense for any school, college or athletic facility, typically costing $50,000-$100,000. Athletes, coaches, and trainers generally prefer maple hardwood flooring with a shock-absorbing subflooring. However, in addition to its hefty initial cost, hardwood flooring requires regular cleaning and maintenance to retain its professional appearance.

Gym floor manufacturers and refinishers recommend that you only allow appropriate athletic footwear on the floor to minimize damage. But most gymnasiums are multipurpose facilities. What can be done to protect your investment during non-athletic use? A premium quality gym floor cover can keep the floor looking good, reduce maintenance costs, improve safety and create an attractive space that can be used for other purposes.

What Can Happen to a Gymnasium Floor?

A whole host of risks come along with using the gym for commencements, proms, conventions, and other special events. Wood flooring can be scuffed and scraped by heels and street shoes. Furniture such as tables and chairs will likely be used, and can potentially cause even more damage. Food and drinks might be served, coming with a risk of spills. Even during athletic use, gym floors can become damaged by heavy equipment, team benches, scoring tables and sideline seating. Spectators or organizers may be wearing hard-soled footwear as they walk around the edges of the floor.

Maple flooring can also be damaged by improper cleaning and maintenance. Harsh chemical cleaners can wreck a hardwood floor, as can automatic floor scrubbers and the overuse of water. For this reason as well as the cost, it is best to limit the amount of maintenance and cleaning that needs to be performed on the floor.

Reasons to Use a Gym Floor Cover

Covering the floor during non-athletic use is an obvious way to avoid most damage from improper use. We can’t forget to mention that gym floor covers help keep gym floors looking good by reducing wear on your hardwood and their non-slip texture even decreases potential slips and falls. But does it make financial sense to acquire one?

Gym floors represent an enormous investment for schools. Even the most modest gym floor is still costly to install and requires constant maintenance and care to remain in pristine condition. That’s why it’s so important that maintenance teams take the right precautions to protect gym floors and maximize their service life.

One of the most important precautions you can take to protect your gym floor is to cover it when it’s being used for non-athletic activities, such as graduations, assemblies, dances and concerts. The best gym floor covers will protect flooring against unwanted foot traffic, impact from furniture, and scuffs and stains.

Gym Floor Maintenance: Time and Cost

Even with daily cleaning and careful use, gym floors require regular maintenance. Annual re-coating is recommended, with more frequent treatments for floors that see heavy daily use. Experts recommend that you completely sand, reseal, repaint and refinish a gym floor every 5-10 years, depending on the amount of use and, predictably, whether or not the floor is covered during non-athletic use.

The average cost of sanding and refinishing a gym floor (materials, labor and painting) is $3.00 per square foot. For a 5,000 square foot gymnasium, this adds up to $15,000. In terms of time, a coat of finish can take as long as 7 days to fully cure. The whole process of sanding and refinishing a floor usually takes 3 to 4 weeks. That’s a long time for your gym to be out of commission. What’s more, a gym floor doesn’t last forever. The Maple Flooring Manufacturer’s Association (MFMA) says that the thickest grade of properly maintained maple flooring can only withstand up to ten sandings before a new floor must be installed. Keeping your gym floor in good condition will reduce maintenance and increase its lifespan.

Gymnasiums are Multi-Purpose

Is your gym regularly used for activities other than sports? School gyms can be an attractive, convenient, and cost-effective event space for special occasions. They are generally used for all kinds of school functions, such as graduation commencements, award ceremonies, dances, proms, holiday events, lectures and science fairs. In these times of heavy foot traffic, a wooden gym floor that was designed for sneakers can be overrun by destructive heels and street shoes. Scuffing, denting and scraping from tables, chairs and other furnishings can also cause significant damage. Using a gym floor cover for these special events will greatly minimize damage. But what else do you need to consider to begin the transformation from a sports arena and protect your investment from damage?

Floor Cover Protection: A covering system can help add years to the life of your gym floor, transforming it into an ideal place for hosting non-sport events. The perfect cover or tarp will help ease the burden of heavy foot traffic, stains, scuffs, impact from furniture and all the damage that comes from celebrating special occasions.

Customized floor covering can come in a variety of colors, weight, slip resistant textures (hey, it can get dangerous when you’re cutting a rug on the dance floor) and water resistant materials – because a little drink spillage is bound to happen. And even more, storing and applying your floor covers doesn’t have to be a hassle.

Divider Curtains: Transforming your gym into a wedding reception hall or celebration station doesn’t begin and end with floor covers. If you want to section off parts of the gym and turn them into various “rooms” -- like a kid’s play place, for instance -- stylish divider curtains can help achieve your goal.

Wall Padding: Protective wall padding may not come to mind when you’re thinking about prom gym decorations or special occasion gym transformations, but never underestimate the importance of safety at a party. Whether it’s for the safety of your party goers or the protection of your gymnasium, wall padding can address certain hazards caused by corners, beams and columns found in gyms across the nation. And if you’re bringing in a stage to transfer your gym into a concert hall, stage padding is a brilliant idea for proactive injury control because when you’re rocking out, you never know when the crowd is going to get out of hand.

The School Gym Can Be a Cash Cow

Do you rent out your gym to other organizations? Some states pay a nominal fee for a school gym to be used as a polling place. A school gym might also be used for civic group meetings, fundraisers, trade shows, church services, concerts or political rallies. A high quality floor covering can turn your school’s gymnasium into an attractive space that can be rented out when not in use, generating income for the school.

Beyond simply protecting the gym floor from damage, a gym floor cover will hide the sports-specific paint on the hardwood and turn the whole room into a space more suitable for other types of events. For example, if using the facility for a convention, a gym floor cover will will give visitors the sense that they are in a convention center, rather than in a basketball court being used for a convention.

Gym Covers Save Time Now

Standard vinyl gym floor covers are made to be everything that a beautiful maple hardwood floor isn’t — stain, abrasion, and tear resistant, as well as low maintenance. What would the point be otherwise? Less obvious, though, is that these attributes offset the time and effort of utilizing a cover system on a day-to-day basis. A large system only takes about 20 or 30 minutes for two people to put down or pack up, drastically reducing cleanup and maintenance time following any event. The use of a stain and abrasion resistant covering means daily effort is both lower and more predictable.

Carpeted Gym Floor Covers Can Improve Acoustics

Gymnasiums are notoriously poor acoustical spaces. All surfaces are generally hard, causing sounds to bounce in unpleasant ways given the non-acoustical nature of gymnasium design priorities. Without some effort to remedy this issue, a gymnasium will be a very unpleasant venue for audience members at events where sound is key. A sound absorbing carpet floor covering, available as easy-to-install tiles, remedy this by greatly reducing reverberation, making it more suitable for lectures, commencements and concerts.

Gym Coverings Provide Enhanced Safety

While vinyl gym floor covers of all types tend to be more slip-resistant than finished hardwood, higher end styles are optionally available with non-slip textures and patterns. These offer additional precaution against slip and fall accidents, should the floor surface become wet. Installing a non-slip gym floor cover for public events can reduce the risk of injury and potential liability.

Materials are Purpose Formulated

Today’s gym floor coverings, coated with material such as PVC polyester mesh, are extremely durable, fire retardant, waterproof, rot and mildew resistant, antifungal and antibacterial. This means that you won’t put your cover away one day and find it unusable or in desperate need of cleaning when you get it out again months down the road.

Other Advantages of a Gym Floor Covering

• Different materials and weights make it suitable for various uses and usage levels.
• Many colors are available to match your organization or school colors.
• Custom printing can be added to boost school spirit or display advertisements and sponsorships to help generate revenue.

Types of Gym Floor Covers

Gym floor covers are available as roll systems or tiles. Integrated roll systems make it fast and easy to install and take up a gym floor covering. This type of floor cover, typically in PVC polyester coated vinyl, is available in up to 10-foot wide sections which are taped together once installed. A matching rack, which can be operated with a hand-crank or motorized winder, lets two people put down a gym floor cover in about 30 minutes. The other option is a tile-based floor cover, which can be made of plastic or carpeting. Carpet is more expensive, but it’s extremely durable, easy to clean and professional in appearance for special events. This style of cover does take longer to install and remove, and takes up more space in storage. It can also be more effort to maintain, as it doesn’t offer conveniences like the brush assembly option for vinyl roller racks.

Questions to Ask When Considering a Gym Floor Cover

When considering a cover for your gym floor, ask yourself these questions:

What types of functions will you be having in your gym?

Gymnasiums typically have poor acoustics. If you use your gym for speeches, lectures or concerts, consider carpet tiles for your floor covering. Carpeted gym floor covers also offer a different aesthetic than vinyl covers, and this may be preferable for conventions, banquets and other upscale events.

How often do you use your gym for other activities?

Consider how many times per week, month or year you’ll be covering your gym floor, and how much foot traffic you expect. Vinyl covers that range from 10 to 22 ounces per square foot are good for light usage (once or twice a year). For heavier usage, you’ll want a thicker cover that’s more than 26 ounces.

How much floor space do you need to cover, and what storage is available?

Floor coverings 6 to 10 feet wide can be used in a large gym and secured with tape. Storage may be an issue, although the mobile storage racks make this easier, and attractive, printable covers are available. Modular products are good for smaller gym floor sections. Runners that are just a few feet wide can protect sideline areas from the scraping of team benches, scoring tables and chairs.

What is your available staffing?

Heavier products take longer to install. Tile can be put down faster the more people help. Most roll systems require only two people to install.

Do you have a color or design preference?

You may wish to choose a product that’s available in your school color, or customize your cover with a name and logo.

What makes one gym floor cover better than another? What should you look for when choosing a floor cover?

Durable fabrics: It’s important to make certain the floor cover you choose is manufactured from heavy-duty fabrics that will withstand wear and tear and offer the highest level of protection for your flooring. The best floor covers are made from high-grade, 3-ply fabrics that are PVC coated on both sides.

Fire retardant: For safety purposes, it’s important to choose a gym floor cover that offers fire resistant properties. A good floor cover is fire retardant to all standard fire codes, including NFPA 701, CA Fire Marshal and UL 300.

Slip resistant: Floor covers are often used during non-athletic events, including everything from dances to graduation ceremonies. It’s important that your floor cover can safely handle foot traffic. Quality floor covers meet all ADA and OSHA requirements for slip resistant surfaces, ensuring the safety of those walking across them.

Design customization: Not only are gym floor covers functional, but they can also enhance the appearance of your gym. Floor covers come in all different colors, and some companies even allow you to customize your cover by adding your school’s logo or lettering of your choice.

About CoverSports

CoverSports offers a wide selection of top-quality gym floor covers and accessories. GymGuard® ultra-durable floor covers are waterproof, fire retardant, antibacterial and antifungal, as well as mildew and rot resistant. GymGuard Plus floor covers have a raised pattern for added safety and slip resistance. Carpet Tiles provide a professional look for conventions and other special events, and GymGuard Runners are ideal for protecting high traffic locations at entrances, exits and in front of bleachers.